


a blush for thought

by Port



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, Romance, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 02:21:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13044483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Port/pseuds/Port
Summary: A mission gone sideways leaves Jemma and Daisy with the ability to read each other's thoughts when they touch.





	a blush for thought

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



> Thanks so much to the mods for their help and patience. You guys are the best.
> 
> Title from John Keats' [Sharing Eve's Apple](https://www.poemhunter.com/poems/sharing/).
> 
> Really hope you enjoy, flipflop_diva!

It wasn’t the inhuman’s fault. She was new and untrained. She lifted her hand and said, “Get back,” and a bright light blinded Jemma. The inhuman turned and ran away while Jemma blinked past stars and white flares, disoriented.

The dazzle faded, but in its place was Daisy, kneeling, holding her head. Jemma crouched and placed her hand on her shoulder, fingertips falling above the collar of her shirt. She started to say, “Are you okay?” but a wave of sensory overload cut her off. Confusion, pain, disorientation--not hers but Daisy’s, foreign-familiar. And layered over that, Jemma’s own concern and confusion, both experienced and witnessed. Jemma’s hand slipped back to her side, and both women gasped.

\---

Coulson didn’t want them driving until they’d been checked out, so they took a Lyft to the landing field, each of them pressed close to opposite doors, having entire freaked-out conversations with their eyes.

\---

The Lyft dropped them off before the Bus arrived. They stood five feet apart on the empty landing strip, Daisy with her arms crossed under her ribs, Jemma pressing her palms against the outsides of her pockets.

She found her voice at the same time as Daisy. Possibly that was an effect of the… connection, but they had always been in synch like that anyway. Jemma still had so little data to work with.

“Do you think we should--” Daisy began as Jemma started, “Maybe we should--” They both laughed, thinly. Then they shuffled closer together, slowly reached out their hands and hooked their forefingers around each other.

It was like stepping into another world. She could hear without her own ears, sounds she realized she had filtered out, consigned to the background. She saw herself through Daisy’s eyes, almost laughably beautiful, not the same face Jemma frowned at in the mirror from time to time. And then there were the vibrations, almost imperceptible, shaking up through the ground into Daisy’s feet, rattling the atoms of her bones, hanging in the very molecules of the air before Daisy’s fingertips--waiting to be told what to do.

Where before had been confusion and pain, Daisy now radiated only dead calm, down to her bones, and beneath that--

They broke apart again, out of breath.

\---

Strapped in against the wall on the bench seat in the Bus was usually a good place to get in some girl talk, catch up on the goings on in the lab and the field, their projects, their days and nights. Today, though, they sat across from each other, silent and eyeing each other curiously. Mack sent them worried glances from his own seat, but no one spoke. Jemma realized she had two very different puzzles now.

\---

“So you’re saying you can read each other’s minds when you have skin-to-skin contact.” Fitz was as fascinated as Jemma knew she would be, were she not one of the people sitting four feet apart on the lab table. Funny what a difference perspective made. “Is it just between the two of you, or can you read other people’s minds?”

Daisy shook her head. “We haven’t tried touching anyone else yet. It can be… a little invasive.”

Jemma’s eyes widened and she turned to Daisy, reaching out at first then pulling her hand back. “Oh, no, I honestly hadn’t thought of it like that. Daisy, did I--? I promise I only saw surface thoughts and perceptions, nothing I’d deem personal at all.”

Daisy kept her hands neatly folded in her lap. “It’s okay, calm down. I didn’t mean you were invasive--you were very… respectful. It’s fine. It’s just this whole thing is kind of weird, right?”

“Well, that term becomes more relative every day around here, but yes, I suppose so.” She tried to remember what it had felt like to have Daisy in her mind. Daisy had been a wide-eyed, cautious explorer. Invasive was the exact wrong word.

“Well then,” Fitz said, looking back and forth between them curiously, “We should do a test, to see if your telepathy extends to others.” He rolled up one sleeve and held his arm out to Daisy.

She raised her eyebrows. “You sure?”

“It’s for science,” Fitz responded. 

Jemma pressed her lips together as Daisy lifted one hand and grasped Fitz’s wrist. In the moment during which neither Daisy nor Fitz reacted, an unusual emotion came over Jemma, and she hoped avidly that it only worked between her and Daisy.

\---

Extensive testing with a variety of volunteers gave Jemma her wish. She and Daisy could touch anyone else without knowing their thoughts or sharing their own, but to each other they were an open book.

They very carefully kept apart. At the end of the day, they said an awkward good night.

\---

After Daisy’s comment about touch telepathy being invasive, Jemma had felt a little embarrassed about her own curiosity. Yes, it was scientifically interesting, and even quite intense, physically and emotionally. But why hadn’t she intuited, as Daisy had, that reading each other like that could be… nosy? Jemma was not nosy; she was too British for that sort of impoliteness, and she would never try to push her way in where she wasn’t welcome. 

The thing was, she hadn’t noticed any sort of unwelcome in Daisy’s mind. None at all.

\---

After lying awake too long, Jemma began to wonder whether sleeplessness could be a side-effect of touch-telepathy. She got up and sat at a table to work on the problem of turning it off, but found herself thinking back to her own face through Daisy’s eyes, glimpsed on the runway. Jemma had looked the same, but so different; she’d been glowing.

At six in the morning, a knock startled her. She opened her door to find Daisy in full-body workout clothes, long sleeves reaching up to black gloves, a thin cloth tied loosely around her neck.

“Do you mean there’s a pair of gloves you haven’t taken a scissors to?” Jemma asked.

“Very funny,” Daisy said, rolling her eyes above a smile. “May showed me a new throw. Want to learn?”

\---

Covered from neck to toe, Jemma let Daisy walk her through the steps it took to fight someone attacking from the side. She picked up the gist of it first, then practiced the details one by one, Daisy patiently running her through the moves until Jemma felt competent enough to actually spar.

Daisy came at her from just within her peripheral vision and Jemma dipped, grabbing and pushing the way she’d just learned, sending Daisy rolling smoothly away. Daisy popped back up, grinning. “That was perfect.”

“It was, wasn’t it,” Jemma reflected.

“Oh, look who’s getting cocky!”

“Well, yes, of course,” Jemma said. “I never thought I could do any of this. But what I meant was, your teaching style has changed. You used to start with all the details, but today you gave me the big picture first and I learned much faster.”

Daisy stared. “You’re right. I think… I think it was from seeing inside your head. I mean I always knew you were smart, but the way you process things is on another level. I must have gotten a sense for how you like to learn.”

“That’s extraordinary. We should--Daisy?”

Daisy had crumpled to the floor, holding her head. 

\---

Days later, Daisy was still getting headaches, but they weren’t as severe. Jemma thought they must be related to their touch-telepathy, but there was still the question of why Jemma herself was feeling no side effects. The obvious answer was that Daisy was inhuman, and already had powers of her own. She wasn’t designed to have two sets of abilities. Then again, Jemma as a human wasn’t designed to have any abilities, so there they were.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Coulson told Daisy in a meeting with the team. “We found out where the inhuman who did this is hiding. Given what she can do, you two are the only agents I can send after her, since you’re already affected.”

Daisy nodded. The inhuman’s abilities were still not entirely defined, and she could be very dangerous, but even so Daisy had been worried for her. Jemma found herself once again grateful Coulson had brought Daisy on all those years ago.

\---

The house was falling apart, boards over the windows, saplings growing up through the porch slats. It all but had a sign announcing “death trap” taped to the door. Add in the remote location in the woods by a suburb, and Jemma knew Fitz would be making horror movie references if he were here. 

Daisy met her eyes as though she was thinking the exact same thing. They nodded to each other and went in, flashlights on.

“I sometimes stayed in places like this, before S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Daisy said as they carefully picked their way across the entryway and living room. It was pitch black inside, their flashlights revealing evidence of campers.

“I thought you had your van?” Jemma said.

“I didn’t always have it. But boy was I happy when I got it.”

A noise came from upstairs. They moved to the foot of the staircase, and Daisy called up, “Beatriz? Beatriz, it’s Daisy Johnson and Jemma Simmons from S.H.I.E.L.D. I know you’re afraid, but we’re here to help you.”

Silence, then a moan.

“Beatriz, are you hurt?” Jemma called.

They heard a slight, indistinct voice, then nothing. Daisy sighed. “Okay then, let’s go up the no doubt rotted staircase in the dark, shall we?”

Step by step, they made it to the top. The second floor had a musty smell of decomposed wood, even worse than downstairs. Daisy called out again for the inhuman and got no answer. They would have to search around.

Jemma took a careful step, but as soon as she put her foot down, the floor folded in and dropped out beneath her, crashing and groaning. Jemma flailed as she fell, then an abrupt jerk on her right arm, her fall arrested.

Daisy had caught her by the hand, bare skin against skin. Jemma hung in the air, suspended from where Daisy lay at the edge of the floor, but neither was entirely there.

 _I don’t want to be invasive_ , Jemma told her, gliding above a planet of sensation and experience.

_You couldn’t be_ , Daisy replied, with a sense of grim resolve. _I’m just not sure you’ll like what you see._

__Jemma saw herself again, glowing and far too beautiful._ _

__Their hands were slipping, Jemma was going to fall, but maybe there was time. Jemma showed Daisy’s face to Daisy. _I always do, Daisy.__ _

__Just as her fingers lost their grip, Daisy brought her other hand down and clutched her wrist. Jemma clung and did her best to help as Daisy hauled her up. When she reached the broken floor again, they fell against each other and embraced, not caring when their skin met._ _

__\---_ _

__Finding Beatriz took a long time, Daisy using her powers to suss out the structural integrity of the floor everywhere they went. Finally they found her in a little room with a locked door, lying sick from an infection. She had a puncture wound, probably from a nail in this death house. They called in med evac and Daisy used her powers to punch out the exterior wall so they could be picked up from the air. Jemma looked back at her incredible friend as she assisted with the transfer; Daisy stood quietly in thought, a small smile lightening her face._ _

__\---_ _

__They stared at each other all the way back home, not feeling weird about it at all._ _

__\---_ _

__Daisy’s lips were warm. Jemma tried to focus on the sensations she was feeling rather than Daisy’s thoughts about the smoothness of Jemma’s skin, the silkiness of her hair. She almost broke the kiss laughing. _It’s like making out with myself_ , she told Daisy, who did have to stop and laugh for a while._ _

__They came back to it and found what worked for them. The more they touched, the better they became at communicating with intent; less blocking and more sharing. Jemma took her clothes off slowly, realizing what that did for Daisy. Daisy pressed herself closely like a blanket, just the right tactile pressure for Jemma. They came together in one night more than Jemma had with anyone else over the course of entire relationships._ _

__Sleeping together afterward, intertwined on Daisy’s pillows, brought shared dreams. Jemma would have thought such a thing would be too much, but it wasn’t. It was like visiting with a friend on a warm summer day._ _

__\---_ _

__“I don’t think I can undo what I did to you,” Beatriz told them, sorrow in her voice._ _

__Even after researching it on her own, Jemma didn’t have a clue how to reverse it either. She met Daisy’s eyes over Beatriz’s head._ _

__“You know,” Daisy said, “even if you could, I’m not sure I would ask for that.”_ _

__Jemma knew it to be true._ _

__

__End._ _


End file.
